BitTorrent Counters Piracy Rep With Indie Distribution Partnership

The P2P filesharing company long associated with illegal piracy is engineering a PR facelift. On Monday BitTorrent will post the first seven minutes of Cinedigm‘s April 26 opener Arthur Newman, launching an experimental promotional partnership with the distributor that Cinedigm Chief Marketing Officer Jill Newhouse Calcaterra says will include a half-dozen upcoming releases. A romantic drama isn’t the easiest sell for BitTorrent which skews 64% male, with 40% of users aged 16-34. But 57% of BitTorrent’s users are 25-54, the film’s target demo. And BitTorrent has 170 million users according to the company. On that scale the potential reach is huge. “The average Youtube movie trailer hits tens of thousands of views in a few weeks”, says BitTorrent’s Christian Averill. “We should hit that number in downloads of the Arthur Newman content in a matter of hours”. Using BitTorrent’s “Bundle” protocol, the promotion will make available the film’s trailer and images and link to the film’s media campaign including VOD and online ticketing. BitTorrent is currently in discussions with major Hollywood studios on several other high profile summer films. But BitTorrent‘s VP of Marketing Matt Mason tells Deadline the longer-term plan is to build a direct-to-fan initiative for creators to share and monetize their own content, developing within the next 12 months.